


Rumble Underneath my Feet

by dickviolin



Category: Blur (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teachers, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 01:12:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17612621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickviolin/pseuds/dickviolin
Summary: Graham and Damon got proper jobs instead of becoming rock stars. Alex pursued his dream of making cheese in the Cotswolds. Imagine you're a tree.Find me onTumblrandTwitter





	Rumble Underneath my Feet

“Well, well, well, Mr Coxon.”

 

Damon sauntered. There was no other way for Graham to put it. Hips forward, toes out, confident as you like, he sauntered towards him. He was grinning, with one eyebrow cocked. 

 

“Smoking dope on school property. Ought to send you straight to the headmaster.”

“Afternoon, Albarn,” Graham said.

“Gizza toke, then,” Damon said, and sat down next to him. They were on the low wall that looked out onto the playing fields. After a drizzly spring day of football, the latter looked like the Somme. It was four o’clock. The grounds were almost empty, save for a flat-footed cleaner wandering around with his litter picker and binbag. The kids were gone. If Graham Coxon, head of English and not much else, wanted to light up a cheeky spliff before heading home, he was more than entitled to.

Well, technically he wasn’t. Technically, the new (and very first) drama teacher could have called the headmaster and had Graham fired, but given he was now taking an enthusiastic drag on said spliff, that seemed unlikely.

 

“How was your first week?” Graham said, out of politeness.

“All right.” Albarn- Damon, that is, even though they were both in suits and ties for work still- had one of those faces that Graham couldn’t take his eyes off. He’d had trouble in the staffroom all week. He'd been watching him over piles of marking and cups of tea. Damon seemed the gregarious type. He’d ingratiated himself with Mr Finch, the three-hundred-year-old maths teacher, as easily as he had with Sasha, the perky young PE teacher who supported Millwall and had the scars to prove it. _Prick_ , Graham had thought, automatically. People who got on well with other people always made him feel uncomfortable. What came naturally to them- that ease, that sense of self-assurance- was elusive for him. Not that he was bitter. He was just suspicious of people who could make eye contact without being at least a bit pissed. He was suspicious of Damon, coming in, all floppy hair and smiles, thinking he could teach _drama_ , of all things, at a school like this.

 

“The kids like you?”

“I’m a drama teacher, mate. My classroom might as well have a sign outside saying ‘doss central’.”

“You’ve got a classroom?” Graham said.

“They don’t let me use the hall. Anyway, a classroom will do for an hour a week pretending to be a tree.”

“Is that why you went to drama school? To teach spotty ingrates how to pretend to be a tree?” Graham knew it was a bitchy thing to say. That was sort of why he said it. He wanted to push Albarn's buttons. See how long that smile would last in front of the grumpiest bastard in the J-block.

“Why, did you do an English degree to teach them to give a shit about Shakespeare?”

“Pretty much.”

Damon shrugged and grinned. _What was that_ , Graham thought, _was that flirting?_

“I always thought I’d be in a band by now,” Damon went on, as if they hadn’t just had a verbal sparring match.

“Funny,” said Graham, handing him the spliff, “So did I.”

“D’you play?” Damon blew smoke rings into the sky. _Cunt._

“Guitar. Sax. Keys. Bit of this and that.”

“Right.”

“Nearly started a band with a mate of mine at uni. Alex.”

“What happened?”

Graham shrugged. “He moved to the Cotswolds. Makes cheese.” There was a bit more to it than that. There was a punch-up over a girl which turned into a night of drinking which turned into a night of something quite a bit more interesting, which turned into a three-year relationship that crashed and burned after graduation, and only now was beginning to grow back into a friendship. But Damon didn’t need to know, not after one conversation over a post-work spliff.

“Well, I’ve got a mate who works for the council, he’s a drummer,

and they’re like hen’s teeth,” Damon added.

“Are you suggesting we quit our jobs as mild-mannered secondary school teachers and pursue our adolescent dreams of becoming rock stars?”

Graham shot a look at Damon. God, his nose. He’d never noticed a boy’s nose before, but Damon’s was just excellent. And that little gap between his two front teeth. And that daft floppy hair. Like straw. Blue eyes. It was all there. _Fuck._

“Nah,” Damon said eventually. “Not likely, eh?”

“I think I’ll stick to trying to get them to understand Hamlet.”

“Good luck.”

“And good luck to you trying to get them to become trees.”

“There’s more to the art of acting than that, grasshopper,” Damon said. He stubbed out the spliff and flicked it in a perfect arc into a drain. It was only half-done and Graham’s salary didn’t leave a lot of room for his dope budget, so he was about to complain, but then Damon was standing up and he was just in the way of the sun, so his silhouette was dark and Graham had to squint.

He was holding one hand out.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said. Graham stood up and took his hand.

“A drink?”

“I’m asking you out, genius.”

“I gathered that.” He hadn’t gathered that, but he was pleased nonetheless. Damon might have been a cunt. He might not. Graham suspected finding out would be interesting, if nothing else. Dizzying, possibly.

 _Here we go_.


End file.
